


Mourning Till Morning

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: ALSO I really love How To Train Your Dragon??/, Also Toothless is precious and I love him, Aw but man, Because we all know that if we could we would wrap Hiccup in bubble wrap, But I love it all the same?, Eret Son Of Eret is an awkward turtle duck, Gen, Grief/Mourning, HTTYD - Freeform, HTTYD 2 GAVE ME TOO MANY FEELS MAN, He deserves to be happy, He is precious for this world, I guess there are spoilers for Httyd 2???, I have no idea where this came from, I think?, I'm Sorry, It feels punny, Like, No Slash, Oh my gosh the title of this fic is so horridly punny, Otherwise known as the Eret and Hiccup Become Friends fic, Pass it on, Please Don't Hate Me, Please don't let it put you off, Protective Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon), Protective Toothless is my heart and love, The ending where Hiccup gave Eret Skullcrusher broke my heart, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Toothless is overprotective, WHY DIRECTORS WHY, Yah that's about it, but yeah, gen - Freeform, he deserves better, i love them both so much, i love you so much Hiccup don't ever change, like seriously, poor hiccup, poor poor Hiccup, so much, too many - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 22:28:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12241833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: Skullcrusher wasn’t always Eret’s dragon. Eret knows this. He does. It still doesn’t help him very much as to what to do when the newly fatherless chief of the village keeps sneaking to his house in the middle of the night to see his father’s dead dragon.....Essentially, Hiccup keeps sneaking in to see Skullcrusher at ungodly hours of the night because he misses his dad, and Eret is a bit lost, but he tries anyway.





	Mourning Till Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Whoever clicked on this story despite the punny title, you are awesome.
> 
> Sooo... this idea has been with me for a while. I always felt that Hiccup was very selfless for giving up Skullcrusher to Eret just like that, because, you know, that's THE DRAGON OF HIS FATHER, WHO HAS JUST DIED. And I guess I just wanted to explore that a little, so here we are.
> 
> I don't know Eret's backstory, so I kinda made one up for him. It's only a tiny itsy part though, so you can easily skip it.
> 
> THE TENSES OF THIS FIC WERE DRIVING ME CRAZY AND I'M SURE I MESSED UP SOMEWHERE SO TELL ME IF YOU SPOT ANYTHING.
> 
> This fic includes talk of grief and such, so just be warned if that makes you sad... :( If you're dealing with such things, I am honestly sorry for who you lost and I hope that you find peace, and they find peace, and that when the morning finally comes you can be happy. I'm here for you, my friends, in whatever ways I can be. *hug*

Sometimes, Eret, son of Eret, wakes up in the middle of the night.

Sometimes, this is because of a night terror. Dreams and illusions of reality, whispering of times since past, of deep guttural voices demanding payment and tribute, of dragons growling and clawing and attacking him, of something hot and metal being pressed against his skin, burning, burning, until he _screams_.

Sometimes, the nightmares go back even farther, to a lonely hut in a cold land, with only a sickly mother and a depleting herd of sheep for company. To a man, tall and strong and a mountain of solid furry, slamming doors wide open and shouting for his son, for training, even though the man himself had only just returned from who knows where and still had the smell of ale on his breath.

Sometimes, however, it's not.

Sometimes, he wakes up and there is no discernible reason, but he grieves. He grieves for lives he has taken, he grieves for a childhood wasted, he grieves for friends dead and possible friends forever turned away by what he has done.

And sometimes, sometimes there's just this slight... discomfort.

There is something soothing about sleeping on a boat, once one gets used to it. It is always simple, always with that constant, quiet lapping of waves on wood, always a gentle swaying.

It's colder, too, on the boats. The wind is always brisking past, the ice is always floating around oneself, and even though Berk is plenty cold around the year, for the most part, sometimes it's just not enough.

To suddenly transfer as Eret did, from boat to land, is hard. It is hard and uncomfortable, and sometimes he wakes up because of it.

And that's fine, that's to be expected, Eret can deal with that.

What Eret can't deal with is when his house gets invaded.

Not by a horde of dragons of course. No. Those days are long past. No, it's when he receives two visitors, a single dragon, and a single boy.

A single boy who now runs the joint colony of the Island of Berk as chief. A single dragon who rules the dragon side of their joint colony as Alpha.

It's the crooning that awakes Eret the first time. The quiet crooning, and the deep humming, and the responding quiet growls and huffs, only to return to crooning moments later, a correspondence between two dragons if Eret has ever heard one.

And that would have been totally fine, totally, totally fine, but there's a problem.

Eret owns a _dragon,_ not _dragons_.

And the fact that there is an unknown dragon in his shed _scares_ Eret Son of Eret at the time- because his whole life, his whole life, dragons have been bad, have been the enemy, the target, and now they suddenly _aren't_ and he's trying and he's getting there, he just needs a little more _time_ \- and so he gets up, his hand at his hip where a small knife rests.

Erest does not know what he will know soon. If he did, he very likely would have turned away and ran for the hills.

But he doesn't, and so instead he quietly opens the door that leads to his shed, now turned dragon's den.

The sight that greets him is this.

Skullcrusher, green scales flickering and seemingly glowing in the quiet firelight of a torch, giving small concerned grunts and grumbles, nostrils huffing into light brown hair, pressing low to the ground and curling ever so slightly around the young charge leaning against him.

Toothless, scales as black as midnight and as deadly as lightning itself, curling small and meek, wrapping around the slim figure of a young man in plain loose clothes, giving off soft crooning noises and trading looks and sounds with Eret's own dragon.

And Hiccup, looking so small and tiny and _fragile_ in the midsts of the two beasts, chief of the village- chief of _Eret's_ village, now- pressing himself against Skullcrusher and _crying._

The crying is the ugly sort of crying, the kind that starts and doesn't _stop,_ the one that makes your breath draw up short and your eyes squint shut and you chin tremble and your nose run and your eyes _burn_ . The kind that only happens in grief, in mourning in it's truest form, in a deep sadness that lingers heavy on the soul, running so deep that it's hard to even _breathe_.

And for the briefest of moments, Eret is confused.

_Did the Chief of the village make a habit of sobbing over random dragons in the middle of the night?_

But then he remembers. Then he _remembers_ , and Eret doesn't get confused about why Hiccup occasionally comes and curls up with his dragon for hours on end, sitting on straw with his hair in disarray and letting loose streams of words that the former trapper never even bothers in deciphering. He doesn't get confused. Not anymore.

Because Skullcrusher wasn't always _his_ dragon.

He used to belong to someone else, someone tall and strong and brave and and proud, stubborn beyond belief and massive in heart and size and spirit. _Someone good,_ Eret often thinks, _Someone worthy of such a beast_.

But Stoick the Vast is dead, and Hiccup is without a father, and Skullcrusher….

Skullcrusher croons at Hiccup sometimes, like one might do to a baby, to a hatchling. As if he is small and precious and helpless. Eret has seen it sometimes with other older dragons, bonded to wives and husbands, to parents, as they played with their partner's children.

Eret wonders if Skullcrusher sees Hiccup a little like a lost cub, even though he's grown and his mother is there with him. Eret wonders if Hiccup sees Skullcrusher as some living connection to his father, even though none had ever really mastered a bond so strong as Hiccup's and Toothless', where they are so close they are essentially one and the same, even though for the rest of them it's _different_. Eret wonders if Hiccup cares. He wonders if Hiccup is tired, if he feels as if he can't mourn and run a village at the same time. Eret wonders if he should do something, say something, or if that would be out of line. He wonders what comfort Hiccup finds curled up with Skullcrusher in a dimly lit shed in the middle of the night, crying and talking and crooning filling the otherwise silent air.

Eret wonders a lot of things.

That first night, Eret quietly closes the door and heads back to bed, lying there still and silent in the dark even though he knew he would not be getting back to sleep.

And then it happens again. And again. And _again_.

And each night Eret wakes up. And each night, he creeps down to the shed and stares for just a few moments at the boy- man, the _man_ breaking a little unbeknownst to all except three, and each night he creeps back to bed, feeling guilty and small and insignificant and _helpless_.

But, eventually, guttural sobs recede to soft tears, and from there to soft snuffles, and from there to quiet talks; long one sided conversations to someone who is no longer there.

And Eret wakes up one night, and he creeps down to the shed, and it's almost morning, it's almost dawn, he can just see the flicks of lighter night sky as it fades from black to purple. He knows he won't be sleeping again, and so he gets up and plans for an early flight; Skullcrusher will be happy.

And the shed is quiet. The shed is quiet for the first night in a while, and Eret assumes that Hiccup has gone home, vanished into the night just before Eret can 'wake up', disappearing without a trace and without mention.

But Hiccup is not gone. Hiccup is there. Right there, curled up on Skullcrusher foreleg with one of Toothless's heavy comforting wings draped over his small frame.

Hiccup is drooling, and Erik is staring, and the dragons are snoring, and he has no idea as to what to do.

A slit of acid green suddenly flutters to life as the prone black dragon wakes, but even that doesn't help much, because Toothless only flicks his ear as if to recognize Eret's presence before falling back to sleep.

Skullcrusher wakes as well, eyes drowsily shifting open. The beast lets out a soft drawn out gurgling noise, a sound Eret has come to recognise as a greeting, and closes his eyes once more.

(For such a vicious name, Skullcrusher is surprisingly dormant and relaxed, and at times Eret looks upon the beast and the only key defining term he can think of is _lazy_.)

And so Eret is left alone with two snoozing dragons and one snoozing chief, and he _still_ has no idea as to what to do.

Eventually, after much muttered deliberation and indecisive hair pulling and nervous flickers of his eyes, Eret slumps off to his room and grabs a blanket before dragging it back down; winter is setting in, heavy winter, snow starting to layer on the streets outside, and while squished between two fire breathing dragons would probably keep Hiccup plenty warm… Well, better safe than sorry.

He takes a step closer to the prone chief lying on the ground of his shed, and freezes when suddenly Toothless becomes awake and alert, letting loose a slow, menacing growl.

Eret hardly dares to breathe, but Skullcrusher is letting out a huff of a breath and nudging the black dragon with his nose, and Toothless relaxes with a grumble and lifts his wing to give Eret easier access.

For a few more silent moments, he stays still. Again, the former trapper is struck by how _small_ Hiccup looks, curled on his side and face smoothed out and free of the furrowed brow that he so often wears. He wonders, not for the first time, how old, how _young_ , the lad is, and what craziness had to happen to get him where he is today.

From what Eret hears from the others, it's a lot.

But he has no time to sit and ponder, because Toothless will get anxious again and it's cold and it's honestly none of his business, so he lies the blanket down on his sleeping leader- this boy, this boy who's younger than Eret, even, who can do such incredible things, such incredible, amazing things that Eret can hardly believe his eyes even when it happens right in front of him- and goes inside.

When he returns a few hours later, the sun is breaking over the cusp of the ridge, and the blanket is folded neatly and lying on top of a snoring Skullcrusher, and Hiccup and Toothless are nowhere to be found.

Eret doesn't see Hiccup for the next few days, always entering just as the brunette is leaving, or vica versa. He would get annoyed, but the whole thing seems to be by honest coincidence instead of planned keep away, so he lets it slide.

(It helps that he has no idea as to what to say, or what to do, and every meeting delayed is another few hours to think and plan and make up apologies or awkward _I don't mind'_ s _,_  and  _You can stay'_ sand even _You can take Skullcrusher back, if you need him_ 's _,_ although even the thought of the last makes his heart clench all tight and wrong in his chest.)

In the end, it happens like this.

It's early morning, the sun is just starting to rise, and they are walking down the quiet streets to get a fresh catch of fish for breakfast before all the good stuff is gone. Skullcrusher lets out a familiar little croon, and Eret tenses and turns, and there's Hiccup scratching the chin of the massive armoured dragon as if he were no more harmful than a puppy, letting loose quiet cooing noises all the while.

(Eret is pretty sure the younger man doesn't even realize he's doing it.)

And then Hiccup looks up and spots him, giving him one of his smiles, the awkward little crooked one which is anxious and apologetic and friendly all at once, the one that wasn't necessarily _happy_ , but was most definitely expressing _something_ , like an offering of a truce or the offering of an apology or an offering of friendship, but most definitely offering, offering… something.

It's then that the decision is made, and the shed is always left unlocked and a blanket always folded in the corner, an apology and an offering and an act of kindness and an act of friendship all at once, but Eret doesn't know that, not yet.

Because all he can do is try for a smile back, lean against his dragon, and close his eyes, soaking up the light of the sun as it finally rises and night breaks into dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! :)


End file.
